From August 24-31, I visited
the DPRK (North Korea) as part of a
very small delegation interested in hearing from North Koreans
themselves about their lives, the US sanctions and incessant war
maneuvers, their history and more.

A sample of photos and
videos, with more to follow soon.

Please bear in mind that
this country is among the most vilified on earth, along with,

...and the many things the people of the DPRK have done so well
which I'll elaborate on over the coming days.

Pyongyang, and much of North Korea, was leveled in the 50s by US
bombings, with reportedly just one or two low-level buildings
standing. After destroying and murdering in DPRK, America slapped
sanctions on the country.

How the people have
continued, and made huge advances, is worthy of respect...

The absurdly cartoonish
"news" one hears
in western media about North Korea is meant to
detract from America's crimes against the Korean people, and to
garner support for yet another American-led slaughter of innocent
people.

One high school student commented something to the effect:

"Why
doesn't anyone put sanctions on America?"

Too true...

I'll be adding more photos to this album as internet and time allow,
with hopes of offering a starkly different view than the corporate
media rendition of North Korea.

A few good resources on North Korea and the US aggressions:

1. Michel
Chossudovsky's
overview, including citing western media sources
acknowledging the US destruction of North Korea

After destroying North Korea's
78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing
countless numbers of her civilians, [General] LeMay
remarked,

"Over a period of
three years or so we killed off - what - twenty percent of
the population."

According to Dean Rusk, who
later became secretary of state, the US bombed,

"everything that moved in
North Korea, every brick standing on top of another."

It is now believed that the
population north of the imposed 38th Parallel
lost nearly a third its
population of 8-9 million people during the 37-month long
"hot" war, 1950-1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of
mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerence of
another.

While
Newsweek in this article is telling the truth, more
generally the US media has failed to inform Americans regarding
the extensive war crimes committed against the Korean people by
successive US administrations.

Collective Memory of the People of North Korea

It is not in
America's collective memory as pointed out by Newsweek, but it
is certainly in the collective memory of the people of the DPRK.

There is not a single family in North Korea which has not lost a
loved one during
37 months of extensive US carpet bombing (1950-53).

"In addition
to direct military action from 1950 to 1953 against the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the country's
official name), US aggression has included multiple threats
of nuclear annihilation, and the deployment of tactical
nuclear weapons into South Korea until 1991.

Re-deployment
is now under consideration in Washington.

Most US
nuclear threats against Pyongyang were made before North
Korea embarked upon its own nuclear weapons program, and
constitute one of the principal reasons it did so.

The country's
being declared an original member of the Bush
administration's Axis of Evil, along with Iraq and Iran,
provided an additional impetus.

…North Korea
has additionally been menaced by annual US-directed war
games involving hundreds of thousands of troops, carried out
along North Korea's borders.

While US
officials describe the twice yearly assembling of
significant military forces within striking range of the
DPRK as routine and defensive, it is never clear to the
North Korean military whether the US-directed maneuvers are
defensive exercises or preparations for an invasion. "

"U.S. troops
have occupied south Korea since 1945; 28,500 are still
there.

There are 38
U.S. military installations in south Korea, plus one
militarized golf course (lifeinkorea.com).

The golf course is the station for the first
Terminal
High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in south Korea, a
U.S. radar system opposed by the Korean people, in the north
and south, as well as China.

Every year,
the U.S. carries out massive war exercises in and around the
Korean peninsula.

This year's
Operation Key Resolve/Foal Eagle, which began in March and
continued until April 24, has involved hundreds of thousands
of troops from the U.S. and south Korea.

The south
Korean news agency Yonhap reported on March 13:

"The U.S.
Navy SEAL Team Six will join the annual Foal Eagle and
Key Resolve exercises between the two allies for the
first time, along with the Army's Rangers, Delta Force
and Green Berets."

Yonhap quoted
an unnamed military official as saying,

"A bigger
number of and more diverse U.S. special operation forces
will take part in this year's Foal Eagle and Key Resolve
exercises to practice missions to infiltrate into the
North, remove the North's war command and demolition of
its key military facilities."

"In 2003 I
had, along with some American lawyers, members of the
National Lawyers Guild, the good fortune to be able to
travel to North Korea, that is the Democratic Peoples
Republic of Korea, in order to experience first hand that
nation, its socialist system and its people.

The joint
report issued on our return was titled "The Grand Deception
Revealed."

That title was
chosen because we discovered that the negative western
propaganda myth about North Korea is a grand deception
designed to blind the peoples of the world to the
accomplishments of the Korean people in the north who have
successfully created their own circumstances, their own
independent socio-economic system, based on socialist
principles, free of the domination of the western powers.

At one of our
first dinners in Pyongyang our host, Ri Myong Kuk, a lawyer,
stated, on behalf of the government, and in passionate
terms, that the DPRK's Nuclear Deterrent Force was necessary
in light of US world actions and threats against the DPRK.

He stated, and
this was repeated to me in a high level meeting with DPRK
government officials later on in the trip, that if the
Americans would sign a peace treaty and non-aggression
agreement with the DPRK, it would de-legitimize the American
occupation and lead to reunification.

Consequently
there would be no need for nuclear weapons. He stated
sincerely that,

"It's
important that lawyers are gathering to talk about this
as lawyers regulate the social interactions within
society and within the world," and added just as
sincerely that, "the path to peace requires an open
heart."

It appeared to
us then and it is apparent now, in absolute contradiction to
the claims of the western media, that the people of the DPRK
want peace more than anything else so they can get on with
their lives and endeavours without the constant threat of
nuclear annihilation by the United States.

But
annihilation is what they in fact face and whose fault is
that? Not theirs.

We were shown
American documents captured in the Korean War that are
compelling evidence that the US planned an attack on North
Korea in 1950.

The attack was
carried out using American and south Korean forces with the
assistance of Japanese Army officers who had invaded and
occupied Korea decades before.

The North
Korean defence and counter-attack was then claimed by the US
to be "aggression" which the United States manipulated in
the media to get the UN to support a "police operation," the
euphemism they chose to use to carry on what was in fact
their war of aggression against North Korea.

Three years of
war and 3.5 million Korean deaths followed and the US has
threatened them with imminent war and annihilation ever
since…"

Related

I
had an interesting encounter with a Korean man I had met when
exiting the flight from DPRK on August 31st.

Then we had just exchanged some brief words. Later in Beijing, we
met by chance and spoke about North Korea.

As
it happens, he had visited 28 years prior, and as it further happens
he was born in the south and lived 20 years of his life there before
America. He speaks the language and on this recent trip interacted
with North Koreans one-on-one.

In
sum, he was very impressed with the changes since he'd been there
nearly 3 decades ago. And while he was born in the south, and lives
in America, he does not support the US rhetoric around the north.

Hopefully we'll have a proper interview/talk when both back at
respective homes.